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More than half of 22 people who committed murder soon after being discharged from inpatient psychiatric care had refused to take prescribed drugs or had failed to attend for treatment, a report commissioned by the Department of Health says. New measures proposed by the department to allow closer supervision of mentally ill people living in the community could help to reduce the risk of similar deaths in future, but these will be effective only if they are backed by the necessary resources, the report says (see editorial on page 551).
The Department of Health commissioned the confidential inquiry into homicides and suicides by mentally ill people in 1991 after an 11 year old girl was killed by a woman who had recently been discharged from a psychiatric hospital. The inquiry team identified 34 cases in which someone who committed homicide...